On Jan. 4, 2007, Democrat Deval Patrick was sworn in as the 71st governor of Massachusetts, and Willard Mitt Romney -- the 70th governor-- began running for the Republican nomination for president.

The next two weeks may decide if he gets it.

Tomorrow night in Arizona, Romney and his three remaining challengers for the GOP nomination -- Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul -- will share a debate stage for the first time since Jan. 26. Romney was aggressive and assured in that debate, and it helped propel him to a smashing win in Florida over Gingrich, at the time his No. 1 rival. But a week after that, Romney went 0-3, losing in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado to Santorum, who had seemed to vanish after his win in Iowa.

Suddenly, Santorum had become the latest flag-bearer for perhaps the largest bloc of Republican primary voters: conservatives who aren't ready to swallow Romney as their nominee.

Santorum skyrocketed to the top in national polls. More important, he moved ahead of Romney in Michigan, which holds its primary next Tuesday (as does Arizona), and in Ohio, which votes on March 6.

Both are stunners. Michigan is where Romney grew up, where his dad was governor and where he won a solid victory over John McCain in 2008. Michigan this year was supposed to be Romney's firewall. But if he loses there, it could be more like his Ford Pinto.

Georgia will award a few more delegates on Super Tuesday, but Ohio remains the GOP's make-or-break swing state for the fall: No Republican's ever won the White House without Ohio.

And for a generation or more, the Republicans who were most successful here -- Jim Rhodes, George Voinovich, Bob Taft, Mike DeWine, Rob Portman and John Kasich -- were much closer in tone to Romney than to Santorum. They were all, to varying degrees, conservatives, but they also conveyed a moderate temperament that Ohioans expect.

Consider that when Voinovich tried to run an ideological assault on Sen. Howard Metzenbaum in 1988, he was soundly rejected. Two years later, a more characteristically pragmatic Voinovich was elected governor. DeWine, who just jumped from Romney's camp to Santorum's, had a similar makeover after his first statewide loss.

But that was a different Republican Party.

David Arredondo is vice chairman of the Lorain County GOP. Early on he recognized the energy of the Tea Party movement and began courting its grass-roots activists. But Arredondo, who's leading Romney's campaign in Lorain County, concedes his guy is a tough sell to the new crowd: In last week's Quinnipiac poll of likely GOP primary voters, Santorum led Romney in Ohio by 7 points overall, but was up 23 among Tea Party devotees.

"Romney, to them, is not the conservative one. He is the anointed one of the party, and there's a certain disdain for the party elite," says Arredondo. "Never mind that two years ago many of the Tea Party folks were side by side with us and racking up some nice wins."

Arredondo is hoping that Santorum -- like Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain before him -- will be a passing fancy, and that Romney's money and organization will eventually convince Republicans that he's their best hope to beat President Barack Obama.

But deflating Santorum could be tough. Bachmann, Perry and Cain simply weren't ready for the national stage. Gingrich's hubris and years of alienating other Republicans left him vulnerable to an avalanche of negative ads.

There's certainly lots of ammunition to use against Santorum. As David Paul Kuhn of RealClearPolitics wrote Sunday, Santorum's positions on abortion, contraception, gay rights and women in the military are hard-right, even by GOP standards -- and miles removed from the views of independents.

But that's a case Romney, who's never been embraced by social conservatives, may be unwilling to make publicly. Instead, he's trying to shore up his street cred on the right by bashing "union bosses" and doubling down on his opposition to the bailout of GM and Chrysler -- positions that may come back to haunt him this fall.

About half of Ohio Republican voters tell pollsters they may yet change their minds. Romney had better hope so.

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